ClownPenis writes: Jun 20, 2014 Press ReleaseWASHINGTON — Taxpayers who do not produce documents for the Internal Revenue Service will be able to offer a variety of dubious excuses under legislation introduced by Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX 36) a week after the IRS offered an incredibly dubious excuse for its failure to turn documents over to House investigators.

“The United States was founded on the belief government is subservient and accountable to the people. Taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to follow laws the Obama administration refuses to follow themselves,” said Stockman. “Taxpayers should be allowed to offer the same flimsy, obviously made-up excuses the Obama administration uses.”

Under Stockman’s bill, “The Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Act,” taxpayers who do not provide documents requested by the IRS can claim one of the following reasons:

1. The dog ate my tax receipts2. Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction3. Traded documents for five terrorists4. Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon5. Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room6. Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car7. Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords8. Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar9. Was short on toilet paper while camping10. At this point, what difference does it make?

ClownPenis writes: On Thursday, the United States Marshals Service posted a notice that it will be administering the sale of the over 29,600 bitcoins seized in the Silk Road case. At present exchange rates, those bitcoins are worth over $17.5 million.

FURTHER READING

FEDS READY TO AUCTION OFF $25 MILLION IN SILK ROAD BITCOINFunds seized from alleged Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht are still in contention.These bitcoins resided in six different wallets found on Silk Road servers and do not include the “bitcoins contained in wallet files that resided on certain computer hardware belonging to Ross William Ulbricht, that were seized on or about October 24, 2013.”The USMS said that the first deadline for bidders will be 9am Eastern Time on June 16, 2014.

All bidders must complete the government’s Bidder Registration Form (PDF), which requires that you provide a copy of a government-issued ID as well as a $200,000 deposit sent by wire transfer from an American bank. The government added that the highest bidder will win, and he or she cannot finance its payment in installments—the winner must pay the full amount in cash.

A former sailor assigned to a US nuclear aircraft carrier and another man have been charged with hacking the computer systems of 30 public and private organizations, including the US Navy, the Department of Homeland Security, AT&T, and Harvard University.
Nicholas Paul Knight, 27, of Chantilly, VA, and Daniel Trenton Krueger, 20, of Salem, IL, were members of a crew that hacked protected computers as part of a scheme to steal personal identities and obstruct justice, according to a criminal complaint unsealed earlier this week in a US District Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The gang, which went by the name Team Digi7al, allegedly took to Twitter to boast of the intrusions and publicly disclose sensitive data that was taken. The hacking spree lasted from April 2012 to June 2013, prosecutors said.

ClownPenis writes: Hewlett-Packard has admitted to creating and using slush funds for bribes, money laundering, and clandestine “bag of cash” handoffs in order to profiteer off of lucrative government contracts in Russia, Poland, and Mexico, according to court documents.

HP’s guilty plea carries with it a $108 million penalty — a combination of SEC penalties, as well as criminal fines and forfeitures paid out to the Department of Justice. Thus far no criminal charges have been brought against American HP executives. The multi-agency investigation, which was conducted by multi-national law enforcement partners, the FBI, IRS, and SEC, has revealed kleptocracies in the three foreign governments and corruption and dishonesty among HP corporate fat cats.

ClownPenis writes: With the computing power, disk space, digitization tech., compression etc. Who really believes that "private" conversations exist anymore? Other than face to face "under the Sun" conversations, is there really any reason to assume everything you say, type, text, tweet, etc. is not "saved forever" on a disk somewhere. That kind of power combined with the social networking boom, where everyone knows who you are friends with, and who their friends are etc. etc. (facebook, linkedin, etc.).

I love tech myself, but it seems as though we may have already "given it all away" already.

Maybe I am paranoid, but it doesn't take that much disk space to archive text, and disk space is cheap. Any voice call can more or less be boiled down into a tiny compressible text file and saved infinitely, and be searched against. All you need is a way to grab it all, personalize the data, digitize it, save it, feed it to "Google", and build an interface like "street view". Instead of streets and houses, you get the "top down" big picture on people, who they know, what they are saying, who they are saying it to etc. This is no longer limited to "email" with "Carnivore / Omnivore", I suggest anything that can be, is being stored, indexed, relation-ized, and retained to be used as at least "unwarranted surveillance", at most probably much worse for the average person.